The Federal Reserve Taxes The People By Creating Money Out Of Thin Air

Transcript

Ron Paul: I rise to call attention to my colleagues of a vote that occurred in the other body today. Senator Vitter from Louisiana offered an amendment to the financial reform package in the Senate that was exactly the same as HR1207, which is the Audit the Fed bill. And there was a vote on this and unfortunately there were only 37 senators that voted in favor of this Audit the Fed bill. This is rather sad because it is already in the House version of the Financial Reform Bill, and in the House we have 319 co-sponsors of this bill. So it’s a very, very well accepted bill by a broad spectrum of both Republicans and Democrats.

But the reason why this is so disturbing is because of the current events going on in the financial markets. We are right now involved with bailing out Europe and especially bailing out Greece. And we’re doing this through the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve does this with currency swaps and they do this by literally giving loans and guarantees to other central banks and they can even give loans to governments. So this is placing the burden on the American tax payers, not by direct taxation, but by expanding the money supply. This is a tax on the American people because this will bring economic hardship to this country and because we have been doing this for so many years, the economic hardship is already here. We’ve been suffering from it.

But the problem comes that once you have a system of money where you can create it out of thin air, there is no restraint whatsoever on the spending in the Congress. And then the debt piles up and then they get into debt problems, as they are in Greece and other countries in Europe. And how do they want to bail them out? With more debt.

But what is so outrageous is that the Federal Reserve can literally deal in trillions of dollars. They don’t get the money authorized, they don’t get the money appropriated. They just create it and they get involved in bailing out their friends like they have been doing for the last 2 years and now they’re doing it in Europe.

So my contention is that they deserve oversight. Actually, they deserve to be reined in where they can’t do what they’re doing. But initially we have to have some oversight and this is why this vote of only 37 senators willing to audit the Federal Reserve in a thorough manner and hold them in check, which means that there were 62 senators that support the idea of maintaining a status quo with the Fed and that they will still be able to make these loans to these foreign central banks.

Now what has this led to? It’s led to tremendous pressure on the dollar. The dollar is the reserve currency of the world, we bail out all the banks and all the corporations; we’ve been doing this for the last couple of years to the tune of trillions of dollars. And even today it looks like the dollar is strong on the international exchange market. People are frightened about what’s happening throughout the world, and they’re buying Treasury bills and they’re buying dollars and holding dollars.

But the real truth is the dollar is very, very week. Because the only true measurement of the value of a currency is its relationship to gold. For 6000 years gold has been the best measurement of the value of a country’s currency. And in the 1970s we were very much aware of what was happening. Our dollar was depreciated to gold at 80% and it ushered in a whole decade of inflation, prices going up 15%, interest rates were up to 21%. And in the last 10 years our dollar has been devalued 80% in terms of gold. That means literally that we have just printed way too much money.

And right now we’re just hanging on, the world is hanging on to the fact that the dollar is still usable. But the whole problem is, our financial situation is no better in this country than around the world. There is just a greater trust in our dollar because we have a military machine and we have economic growth in this country which is greater than others. But quite frankly, it is quite weak. So we face a very serious crisis.

To me, it’s very unfortunate that we are not going to have this Audit the Fed Bill passed in the Senate. It has passed in the House, possibly we can salvage this in conference and make sure that this occurs.

But since the Federal Reserve is responsible for the business cycle, for the inflation and for all the problems that we have, it’s so vital that we stand up and say, “It’s time for us assume the responsibility”, because it is the Congress, under the Constitution, that has been authorized to be responsible for the value of the currency.

Matter of fact, the Constitution still says – it has not been amended, it has not been changed – that only gold and silver are supposed to be used as legal tender, not pieces of paper, not computer entries. This can’t work, it’s not working very well. The world is starting to recognize this and I am really concerned about what is going to happen, because a currency crisis is much worse than a financial crisis. We’ve just been through the financial crisis, we’re in the midst of it. But a currency crisis which is on our doorstep means that our dollar will challenged.

The conservative Outsider - The Threat:
Virtually every public sector entity utilizes multiple “sets of books” to account for debt, deficits, and unfunded liabilities of welfare programs and the costs of their own employee benefits. In some cases, most notably concerning health insurance continuation coverage, there is virtually no unfunded liability disclosed to taxpayers. The federal government does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security, or its own retirement programs as part of the official US debt. All federal and most non-federal public sector entities also pay higher salaries and offer better benefits to their employees than can be provided in the private sector. The massive cost of early retirement for public sector employees, available 10-25 years earlier than is allowed by Social Security, together with free or highly subsidized health insurance during the early retirement years, is generally hidden from taxpayers. Virtually every government entity has huge understated and underfunded liabilities that are either not represented at all, or are misrepresented to taxpayers via employing misleading or incomplete actuarial and accounting methods that the government itself will not tolerate of the private sector. A report prepared for FEN by Andrew Biggs, a scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, states that the disclosed “debt” of non-federal entities is approximately $2.2 trillion (the sum total of all bonds), and that the additional “off the balance sheet” unfunded liability for non-federal public sector pension plans is currently stated to be around $400 billion. Biggs concluded that the actual unfunded liability for these public sector pension plans would be $3.5 trillion if more realistic and conservative interest rate assumptions were utilized. Attempts by others to determine the true federal debt (including unfunded obligations) result in the determination that if one federal “balance sheet” were utilized, the total federal debt would exceed $107 trillion, not the $12.3 trillion currently stated as “debt”. The result is that the total federal and non-federal debt (if unfunded liabilities are included) is an estimated $112+ trillion, or SEVEN TIMES higher than the total $15 trillion currently disclosed to taxpayers.!!

I've been talking to people in boards for a couple of months about ther 100 trillon in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security. What I found out is no one cares. Everyone just says they paid into it, they want it, and they want it now, or they are on it, the government promised them, it's theirs. No one will admit it's free money after one year because they all want the free money. People make it up they paid milions of dollars into SS, they make it up that it was created as a goverment retirement for everyone, they call it their disability pension and pile their children on it too. Everyone makes it up that they would have invested the little money they had to pay into those programs if the government didn't tax them, each person says they would have made great investments and made millons on that money. They didn't invest one cent of the rest of their income, but supposedly they would have made millions investing the six percent they paid into SS. Each man wants his wife who didn't pay into it to get a full payment too. Most people have large retirements and were planning on collecting 3,000 a month in two payments, one for them and one for their wife, they long ago added it into their retirement and were planning on taking lots of trips to Europe on it. They don't care one thing if their kids and grandkids are in 100 trilllion of debt to pay for it or if they are taxed 25 percent to pay for it. The Tea Party is only fighting to get those two programs, which are socialism or welfare for wealthy people. No one cares, they just want the money. So, of course, no one is willing to pay a VAT tax to fund the programs, no one is willing to deal with the politicians on how to save the programs. All of the politicians, on the right and on the left are trying to get rid of those two programs and the old folks are fighting it tooth and nail. Newt Gingrich just came out with a book talking about getting rid of SS and Medicare, the Repubs and the Cato Institute and Glenn Beck are trying to privatize both programs. People are like two year olds, they don't go beyond, they want, they want, they were promised, and they won't ever discuss the fact that, of course it's welfare, that's why it would cost 100 trillion to pay the money and health care just to one more generation who has been promised it.

Libertarians would do away with all of these programs, yet people who are on the programs come in here and post about getting rid of welfare and the illegals thinking that way they can get more free stuff from their entitlements.

Buy the way the National Debt is not, repete not! the 13.45 trillion that they tell the public about. The true National Debt is 112+ trillion. That includes all debt foreign and domestic, including all the Federal pensions money, owed to Social Security Federal Bonds that are due anualy and much more. The money is owed and must be paid. This information can be found at FEN.com or at The Conservative Outsider on facebook. It has been collected and posted there in the discussions tab.

Sean Hannity said last week that the government is going to "means test" social security now. Unless you are poor, you won't be able to get it, or it will be given out for so many years and then cut depending on how much other income you have. I think it will end up being a tiered system, like people who make over 200K might get paid five times what they paid in, like four years of payments, people who make over 500K a year retired might get two years, two times what they paid. The politcians know they can't pay the 100 trillion, so they're chopping it all up now. Obama took 500 billion out of Medicare and cut back on Medicare procedures. The elderly got almost all of the free health care, the Cato Institute says they were receiving way too much care. Since it's all free to them, they wanted everything, now Medicare Advantage will be done away with. If people had to pay 5 percent themselves, they would take better care of themselves and wouldn't demand so many services.

The funniest thing is Obama cut the socialism, and the Tea Party people say no socialism, evil socialism, but they are fighting to get their socialism back. They want to get rid of the health care bill to get the 500 billion put back into Medicare, which won't solve one thing, that will make the Medicare debt 10 trillion more. Once the politicians saw how addicted the older people are to these programs and the huge debt, they're trying to gradually phase the programs out.

It should have been discontinued 20 years go when the WWII generation started living to be 100 and the government was spending a million dollars on each person for free health care. Most of those people are very wealthy, they would easily have given up the SSI after ten years and easily been able and willing to pay for part of their own health insurance premium. They knew it was wrong. Today everyone is so greedy because their so unhappy, they want all of the free stuff and would never agree to any limits on it. The politicians will end up privatizing Medicare, they're talking about giving people a voucher to buy insurance. It would save trillions on top of trillions if the government gave a 12K a year voucher instead of paying for all of the expensive surgeries and tests and meds. It will all be stopped one way or another. Funding 100 trillion for entitlements is beyond crazy talk. Only the people who want the stuff imagine any goverment is going to fund 100 trillion in entitlements.

People pretend they don't know what it means, they don't understand what an unfunded liability is, they were promised, they want. This is why in some ways, people like Bill Maher and others who say Americans are idiots and you have to do everything for them and you have to take actions they don't like because they don't have a clue what is going on are actually right. We all would have been better off with universal health care and a VAT tax because retired people would be paying the 10 percent tax to, Medicare recipients would have had to continue to contribute a little tiny bit in paying for their healthcare, they could have gone single payer Medicare for all, like Dennis Kucinich was saying, that would have funded it, VAT tax it, and that would fund giving everyone the expensive tests and surgeries, the quality of care they want. The Dems had it right, but the old people only cared about themselves continuing to get free health care. I think everyone will end up being willing to negotiate now, either that or it's going to go to privatization, to vouchers, which isn't good.

I am a firm beliver that if we are 80% of the world economy then we should only import 20% of GDP.
GDP is 14.5 trillion for 2009 the Federal Governments revenue is 12% of GDP or was it is now 14% of GDP.
Stoping the imports and not buying from any American companies that outsourse jobs, produce product out of country of any amount, no mater how small. Build American Buy American is the only way to save this economy and its jobs.
Point of fact pfeiffer meds maker is colsing many of its facalities here in the United States and laying off 20,000 employees here in the US and keeping all of their operations over seas because they find it more profitable.
Well I can tell you this it wouldn't be more profitable if we did not allow them to sell their product here or import their product by any means even through any other source. That would mean they would have to hire Americans. I can't say this enough "Build American, Sell American, Buy American" "Made by Americans For Americans"

Do you not agree that specialization and division of labour allows for gains from trade?

Sure, if we didn't allow anyone to intrude on our markets, and if we didn't allow our citizens to expand their market share to markets in other countries, we would secure jobs, but wouldn't we lose all of our gains from trade?

The idea of gains from trade is that each party specializes in the products in which it has a comparative advantage in production over the other. Therefore, party A values party B's product more than he values his own, or else they would not exchange. This allows both parties to swap less valuable products for more valuable products, and effectively enables greater levels of utility than the two parties could have reached by consuming only what they produced on their own.

In order to have a product of comparative advantage to trade, we must have jobs that produce them. It is possible to have both jobs and trade.

Nope, the protected system we have now is the major cause of that because most of our labour force is employed in industries that are unfairly propped up by the government, which means they work in uncompetitive industries on the global scale. Our government further intervenes with prosperity abroad by hitting businesses at home with insane taxes, and barriers to entry which make it far less profitable for producers to produce at home.

We are losing the race because the chinese have a streamlined boat (and an undervalued currency), and our boat is bogged down with harmful government intervention.

Now before you start screaming about how libertarians "just want to get rid of allll government regulation and have anarchy", take a second to notice what I ACTUALLY said. In no way am I advocating that ALL regulation is bad, or that removing even the harmful regulations would instantly solve all of our problems.

It's too bad I have to tell you what I didn't say, in order for you to comprehend what I did say. It must be rough living like that, not being able to comprehend the meaning of words.

Donald Trump says the same thing, bring the jobs home, people would have to be wiling to pay a little more for things, but he said he goes over to China and the Chinese think we are stupid. He says China is kicking our butts and we are letting them, and unless we bring the jobs home and stop the cheap labor stuff, we will no longer be an economic power.

Another thing is, when you see the statistics what illegals cost each state, it is in the billions for each state. This is all for cheap labor for corporations, then we pay others to live on full welfare. All we have to do is make work for welfare, have the people on welfare and free housing do those jobs, send the illegals home, and we would save billions on the illegals and bilions on welfare programs. One of the candidates for governor in California, Meg Whitmann, wants to do work for welfare. It looks like she has a very good chance of winning.

The only disappointing thing about Ron Paul is that he never yet made his mind for running for 2012. I believe we the people will either pore gold, dollars or whatever it takes to make his campaign successful because we the people are so FEDUP with Federal Reserve which there is nothing Federal nor Reserve about this creepy institution.

The Federal Reserve has no choice but to print more money because 700 billion dollars leaves a year with a 700 billion a year trade deficit. We'd be out of dollars in 2 years (during a massive 2-year period of deflation) and once out of dollars we'd be forced to barter with Euros or Pesos, then American's would be at the mercy of the European Union central bank or corrupt Mexican government. Why would you want that? That's crazy.

Of course we can always return to the middle ages monetary system where everyone bartered chickens for goats.

You just don't get it do you! Federal Reserve Notes are just like Doritos, don't worry they'll make more! We won't run out of "toilet paper" either and the Federal Reserve Notes will soon be printed on soft perforated rolls too.

You are partly right when you say "Federal Reserve has no choice but to print more..." but this endless money printing is akin to paying off one credit card with another credit card ENDLESSLY....
Constant money expansion makes you and me poorer, destroys jobs, lays waste to our retirement hopes and ruins our economy.

Do yourself a favor Fred.... Go out and buy 7 oz of pure gold coin, hold it in your hand, feel the weight and know that the FED is not able to COUNTERFEIT that GOLD! >>>REAL MONEY<<<
We the people are CONSTITUTIONALLY guaranteed sound money. Not Fiat Federal Reserve Notes...

If Fred was truly worried about the trade deficit he would support the return of the international gold standard.

As economist David Hume pointed out HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO, the international gold standard provided an automatic mechanism for keeping the balance of payments of each country in equilibrium.

EXAMPLE:

If one country inflated their currency, it’s prices rise. Prices of imports from abroad are now relatively cheaper than prices at home. At the same time, the higher prices at home discourage exports abroad. The result is a deficit in the balance of payments. The gold outflow means that the country must contract it’s inflated paper currency in order to prevent a loss of all of it’s gold.
The contraction lowers prices at home, creating an export surplus thereby reversing the gold outflow until the price levels are equalized amongst countries.

This mechanism has created the most stable economic order the world has ever known.

Trade deficits are THE RESULT of inflationary monetary policy, not the gold standard. Free trade (the absence of government intervention in trade) has nothing to do with it. In fact, it is government intervention into the money supply that causes trade deficits.

Time to re-think your troll strategy. Free-trade is no longer your scapegoat.

The same loss of reserves is true with the fiat dollar we have now, accept the automatic check on our government's inflation is non-existent because we can't run out of gold reserves -- we just print more. This means that there is no reason for our government to reduce the trade deficit by limiting inflation of the money supply.

Fred, if you keep supporting the notion that the Fed is good, don't expect to see the trade deficit come down. That is, until the currency collapses, which is inevitable because we have no check on government inflation of the money supply.

It's like you said, " The Federal Reserve has no choice but to print more money because 700 billion dollars leaves a year". It leaves because of inflation. We`ve reached the point where we have to inflate to support our inflation, which is akin to borrowing to pay your debts.

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